(AFP) A French court on Wednesday sentenced to jail terms of up to 13 years three men charged with connections to the brutal 2016 jihadist killing of an 85-year-old priest that shocked the country.
Father Jacques Hamel had his throat slit at the foot of the altar on July 26, 2016, at his small church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, a working-class suburb of Rouen in northwest France.
The two 19-year-old assailants, Adel Kermiche and Abdel-Malik Petitjean, also seriously wounded a worshipper after bursting in during mass and taking hostages before being shot and killed by police as they tried to leave the church.
They claimed in a video to be members of the Islamic State group, which later called them its “soldiers” retaliating for France’s fight against jihadists in Syria and Iraq.
